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An annual physical should involve more than a doctor beating on your knee with a rubber mallet. Especially if you're a serious cyclist. Evaluating and maintaining your health and fitness is essential to top performance. And just like your body needs to be evaluated and cared for by a professional, so does your bike.

SPORTS MEDICINE FOR YOUR BIKE
Like a well-trained athlete, your bike is also on the cutting edge of performance. It needs to be maintained under the watchful eye of a bike doctor. It's only after performing certain tests that the bike mechanic can discover which areas need more attention. Fixing weaknesses on the bike is much easier and faster than overcoming serious maladies. This is how to give your bike a physical before the next ride.

Integrity: Steady a pencil off a caliper, fork leg or frame tube and spin the wheel. Locate the center of the
wobbles. Pull the rim in line by loosening and tightening the same side and opposing spokes. High spots can be fixed by equally tightening the respective groups of spokes. Flat spots necessitate a new rim.

Foot print: Glance around each sidewall for serious abrasions. Look over the tread surface and pull out goat heads, thorns, nails or Earth First! tree spikes. Recheck tire pressure before each ride. If you don't know what pressure to run, start with 50 psi and fine-tune up or down in 5 psi increments.

Steady power: Use a wire brush to clean the sprockets and the top, bottom and both sides of the chain. Place a drop of chain lube on one pin at a time. Backpedal for a minute and watch for irregular chain movement around the bottom G-pulley wrap (indicating a bad link). Wipe excess oil with a rag.

Lube shot: Use the plastic SPD socket to unthread the pedal cartridge. Pack the pedal cavity with grease and rethread the cartridge. As the excess grease is forced out, it pressure-feeds the cartridge bearings. Place a drop of lube at the outer corners of each of the latching mechanism's spring-loaded pivots.

Loose joints: Engage the front brake and grasp between the lower bearing cup and fork crown with a forefinger and thumb. Rock the bike fore and aft and feel for movement. Rock the wheels up and down and back and forth and feel for play in the hubs, swingarm or suspension linkage. Adjust as necessary.

Shock therapy: When taking an air reading, pressure from inside the shock body is released into the innards of the shock pump and lowers the actual reading by 5 psi to 15 psi. Pump back to the desired number. With a marker, write the pressure you are running on the fork leg, reservoir or frame.

Brake surgery: Unhook a caliper spring and the opposing pad will touch the rim. Check pad angle and height. Do the same on the other side. Modern calipers run little or no toe-in. Pads that have taken a permanent set and are stubborn to adjust can be trimmed with a knife for tire
clearance or toe-in.

Instant reflexes: Twist the bar lever barrel adjusters all the way in and then back out two turns. Set the preferred brake lever play by adjusting the cable inside the caliper fixing clamp. There is now plenty of barrel adjustment left at the lever to loosen or tighten brake play while riding.

Shock absorption: Clean built-up dirt before lifting the fork dust caps or boots. Clean and inspect the fork seals and around the stanchions. Bad nicks can be cleaned with a
jewelers file and 600-grit wet-and-dry. Use fork oil or de-friction lube to lubricate the seal top before
reinstalling the
boot.

 

The headlines are filled with information about the latest in health and fitness. The problem is that most of it is confusing and contradictory. How do you know whom to trust?
Well, MBA has separated the hype from the facts to give you the information you really need.

#1 How To Stay Young

There is no stopping Father Time. You will get older. The question is, will you become wiser or simply weaker? Every decade after the age of 30 your body begins to lose 10 percent of its muscle mass. At the same time the average person gains about ten pounds of fat. It's not a pretty picture. If you are still in your twenties and able to eat double-cheese pizza and ice cream, you are probably thinking that it could never happen to you. But if you have already entered your third decade, you might have noticed that even though you are riding as much as ever and your diet hasn't changed, you seem to be putting on the pounds. You are not imagining things. As you begin to lose muscle mass, your body burns fewer calories, even when you continue to do the same aerobic workouts. As you get older, you either have to eat less or work out more to make up for this lost muscle. Most of us already ride as often as we can and putting in much more time on the bike is unrealistic.
What are you to do? The only way to combat this is to build muscle, and to do that you need to add resistance training to your workout. The latest research shows that lifting weights is the simplest way to slow down both the loss of muscle and the increase in fat. It doesn't take much. Three times a week for about 30 minutes a session is enough to maintain and even gain muscle mass. Since muscle burns more calories than fat, you will be able to keep off those extra pounds, staying strong and trim for decades to come.

#2 Brittle Bones Could Be In Your Future

When Tammy Jaques Grewal announced that she was withdrawing from racing because of osteoporosis, people were shocked. Most of us assume that only couch potatoes or old women suffer from the disease which causes your bones to become so brittle that they break. But the truth is that osteoporosis can strike people who least expect it, even elite athletes. Cyclists may be more prone to this disease than they think. For one thing, riding a bike is not an efficient bone-building workout. Lifting weights and weight bearing exercises such as running or other high impact sports appear to be the best at building up your bones.


#3 Sunscreen Is A Must!

Recent research announced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science made those of us who count on our daily dose of sunscreen to save us from the deadliest form of skin cancer, melanoma, a little uneasy. The study showed that there is no link between the use of sunscreen and the prevention of melanoma. Does this mean that slathering on sunscreen is a waste of time?
Not quite. Melanoma takes years to develop. Many of the advancements in sunscreen have only happened in the last few years, so it's hard to tell if the newer generation of lotions will be better at protecting against melanoma. The current generation of sunscreens contains protection from both UVA and UVB rays, while past generations only protected against UVB rays. According to some of the latest research, it is UVA and not UVB rays that cause melanoma. It is the slower growing and far less deadly skin cancers that are caused by UVA rays.
So, keep up a faithful sunscreen routine. At the very least, it will stop sunburns_which are not only painful, but are directly related to early skin damage and less deadly forms of skin cancer.

#4 Creatine Is Better Left Alone

Creatine was all the rage last year on the race circuit. People claimed that they became stronger in half the time and that it was giving them incredible bursts of speed. But did it do anybody any good?

Creatine supplements help the body to manufacture adenosine triphosphate, also known as ATP. ATP is a main source of energy for muscles. It can be made by the body and also is found in meat and other protein-rich foods. Many people believe that you can increase the supply of energy for your muscles by increasing the amount of creatine in your system. However, as with many supplements, what sounds too good to be true usually is.
There is no doubt about it, creatine will make you look bigger, and at the beginning of last season, there were a lot of people flexing their new muscles. Unfortunately the new found brawn didn't translate into stunning times on the trails. In fact, it turned out that much of it was simply water weight gain. The muscle cells robbed their bloodstream of water, leaving them dehydrated, which often led to cramps and fatigue.
Although creatine seems to increase speed by one or two percent in the laboratory, most experts find that these results don't matter on the trail. Even people who believe that the supplements work understand that they don't increase the amount of energy available for endurance events. The increase that does occur is only available for bursts of power that must be timed to occur when the supplement is at its peak. In the real world, that is almost an impossible task. The bottom line is_forget the quick fix and start training.


#5 Caffeine's The Next Wonder Drug

Caffeine has long been considered a nutritional vice. In fact, people often pride themselves on giving the stuff up. But should they? Maybe not. More and more, caffeine is the star in the healthfood headlines. Studies are being done on tea (and not the herbal variety) as a cancer and heart disease fighter, and coffee as a way to treat clinical depression.
Research is also showing what mountain bikers have always known: caffeine makes you faster on the trails. Caffeine helps the body use carbohydrates more efficiently, which enables energy levels to remain higher for longer periods of time. It has also been shown to increase mental alertness something that we all could use for quick thinking on the trails.
That doesn't give everyone the right to indulge. There are certain people who need to watch their consumption. Some people simply get agitated when they drink even the smallest amount of caffeine. Too much caffeine can raise your blood pressure and lead to anxiety disorders.